← → Europe’s prime rivers — lifelines for the continent’s economy — are running low after a brutal five-month drought scientists are warning that low-water conditions could become the norm in Europe as the climate changes Romania is one of Europe’s largest wheat producers and all the more important for the international market in light of Russia’s blockage of much of Ukraine’s wheat exports Subscribe to the E360 Newsletter for weekly updates delivered to your inbox. Sign Up drought and climate change take on an existential meaning,” explains Nick Thorpe author of The Danube: A Journey Upriver from the Black Sea to the Black Forest they’re having this disaster unfold before their eyes.” “This year is exceptional in terms of [the drought’s] intensity and duration and yet it’s the new normal,” says Karsten Rinke of Germany’s Helmholtz Center for Environmental Research (UFZ) “There’s a huge water deficit in Europe’s landscape which is only getting worse every year that it’s not replenished.” Rinke says that drought conditions in four of the past five years have sapped groundwater further shrunk the glaciers that feed rivers and transformed the landscape that has long nourished communities and ecosystems “Perhaps most alarming this year is the scope of the low water levels across the entire Danube basin, from Bavaria to the Black Sea,” says Thomas Hein of the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna. The basin covers more than 800,000 square kilometers (300,000 square miles) and encompasses 19 countries — 10 percent of continental Europe which means we can’t just pump water from one section to another to make up for the shortfall.” And a grim symbol from the past has emerged: Dozens of sunken German World War II-era warships The drought is taking a huge toll on commerce: Europe’s waterways transport about one ton of freight a year for every EU resident and contribute, in terms of transportation alone, roughly $80 billion to the economy The Rhine is so emaciated today that massive sand bars breach its midsection rendering fully loaded barges unable to transport coal and commodities to the industrial cities of Germany’s Ruhr Valley The coal and fuel that travel the Rhine and other rivers are particularly vital now in light of Russia’s embargoes on gas and coal. And the outages at France’s nuclear power plants due to a lack of cooling water have contributed to the soaring price of French electricity, which has shot up to the unheard-of 900 euros per megawatt-hour – more than 10 times last year’s price As the climate bakes, Turkey faces a future without water. Read more Scientists say that the economic cost of the rivers’ decimation is only part of the problem The less water in the water system as a whole the less dilution for salts and the slower a river flows This leads to higher saline content and higher water temperatures which can be lethal for many species of riverine life Scientists point out that while the predicament of the great rivers of Europe has grabbed the headlines it is the smaller rivers that suffer disproportionately “When this happens they lose their entire community of biodiversity It won’t just return the next time it rains.” Scientists say that millennia of engineering and human activity along Europe’s rivers have also played a role and agriculture’s usurpation of shorelines and wetlands has made Europe’s rivers all the more susceptible to heat waves and low-water conditions “All of our river systems are highly fragmented and vulnerable,” says Singer, underscoring that while the lower Danube is plagued by drought, the upper Danube in Germany and Austria can be at risk of flooding as happened so spectacularly last July in the Rhine borderlands of Germany and Belgium is essentially the same: the inability of highly modified rivers and river basins to hold water for longer periods of time “Healthy natural ecosystems function as a sponge that gives and takes water explains: “We lose high amounts of water because rain cannot infiltrate sealed surfaces and heavy rain after a drought does not infiltrate dry soils Surface overflow goes into channelized and fast-flowing rivers that hardly communicate with the surrounding aquifers.” the authorities’ reflex reaction — namely to dredge deeper — doesn’t address the essential problem But the delta’s special status has not spared it from the extreme weather Freshwater springs in the Delta’s Letea Forest went dry in August endangering the lives of Romania’s famed wild horses enabling water to flow again and the horses to drink The Clean Water Act at 50: Big successes, more to be done. Read more the Vienna-based coordinator of the European Union’s Strategy for the Danube Region says that adaptation measures ultimately must be part of the basin’s future but [the extreme weather] is not going away,” he says “We’ll have to adapt and learn to live with it.” Paul Hockenos is a Berlin-based writer whose work has appeared in the The Nation, Foreign Policy, New York Times, Chronicle of Higher Education, The Atlantic and elsewhere. He has authored several books on European affairs, most recently Berlin Calling: A Story of Anarchy, Music, the Wall and the Birth of the New Berlin. He was a fellow at the American Academy in Berlin. More about Paul Hockenos → Never miss an article. 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